Choose a role for a person

What Organization Admin, Manager, Member and Viewer can do, which permissions are dangerous, and what only the owner can do.

In short

Every member holds one role in an organization, a named bundle of permissions. A role is a ceiling: it says the most a person may do, and each board, project or notebook still decides who it is open to. Four roles are built in; you can make your own.

Before you start

• Who: seeing roles needs "See roles". Changing a member's role needs "Invite and manage members"; making roles of your own needs "Create and change roles".
• Plan: Organizations is part of every plan, Free included. Your plan sets how many members and teams an organization may hold (Plan & usage shows them).
• First: nothing. A role is per organization.

Steps

1. Open the organization's "Access" › "Roles" to read every role side by side.
2. In "Members", open the person's row menu and choose "Change role".
3. Pick the role. The sentence under the picker says what it allows.
4. Press "Save". A change that adds a paid seat shows the price first.

Result: the person holds the new role at once, in this organization only.

The built-in roles

Built-in roles cannot be changed or deleted; a role of your own can - see /help/organizations/custom-roles.

Dangerous permissions

Some permissions let a person change who belongs, who sees what or what is paid. They are marked Dangerous in Access › Roles and in the access overview:

• Invite and manage members; Remove and pause members
• Create and change roles; Create and arrange teams
• Change organization settings; Manage billing
• See who reaches what; Open anything with Manage all
• Manage access tokens and service accounts; Override API verification

• The role newcomers get can never carry a dangerous permission.
• When a role gains one, everyone who manages roles, and the owner, is told once people hold it.
• Access › Overview › "Resting on one person" warns when only one person holds one.

Who can do what

Good to know

• The inviter or the join link chooses a newcomer's role; the founder starts as Organization Admin.
• Roles are per organization and apply while that organization is your workspace. Every change is checked on the server.
• No role opens a private thing by itself. See /help/organizations/sharing.
• Only the owner can delete the organization, export everything, transfer ownership and name a successor. No role can carry these.
• The owner always stays an administrator.
• A site administrator's role opens nothing inside an organization: there they are the member they are, or a stranger.

If something goes wrong

• "Change role" is missing: you lack Invite and manage members, the person's role holds more than yours, or it is you.
• A role you want to give is not in the picker: only administrators can give any role; everyone else gives their own or a lower built-in role.
• A permission seems missing right after a change: reload the page.

Related

• /help/organizations/permission-list
• /help/organizations/custom-roles
• /help/organizations/sharing